


New Chevrolet in Flames

by alouette_des_champs



Series: Gritty She-boot [4]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Actual Drag Racing, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Male Character, Drunk Driving, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Karaoke, Roller Derby, Sexual Content, There are 800 tags for RuPaul's Drag Race but 0 about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: Mermista spends yet another summer putting out fires.
Relationships: Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra)
Series: Gritty She-boot [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683196
Comments: 20
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My intention was to post my Catradora follow-up to "See You at Your Funeral" next, but I realized halfway through that it's gonna take me a little longer to figure that one out completely. Yes, I work on multiple stories in the same series concurrently because I'm a _fucking psychopath_ who doesn't know how to focus or manage my own time. This is the first update that leans on the rest of the series a little bit. It still could probably be read alone with minimal confusion.
> 
> This is a two-fer of stupidity on my part, since I don't know anything about roller derby _or_ cars. Strap in for the spectacle of me desperately trying to write my way around my own ignorance.
> 
> Title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uk42Fn1TM4  
> Jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4MpNxvHjt0

Mermista’s hot girl summer was not going according to plan.

Besides withering away at her own soulless minimum-wage job, she was wasting a lot of valuable “fun in the sun” time driving back and forth to Seafood Shanty, rightfully one of the area’s least popular restaurants. She had agreed to pick Seahawk up from work because he had offered her gas money, not because she actually wanted to see him every day of the goddamn week. His second DUI had resulted in a year-long license revocation, among other legal repercussions. Ostensibly not her problem, but as usual, he had found a way to _make_ it her problem. Besides…it would have been kind of rude of her not to give him a ride after she’d stolen his car keys and hidden them in her sock drawer. It was for his own good, but still. 

They had been _something_ for years now, never quite making it all the way to “officially dating” before one disaster or another sent them right back to square one. Mermista had cut other guys out of her life for lesser offenses, but Seahawk was different, much as she hated to admit that. She had known him longer than anyone else in the city. They were from opposite coasts, but they were both foreigners in the land-locked wasteland they currently called home. Even when they weren’t friends with benefits, they were still friends, and she was savvy enough to know that kind of relationship was rare.

He opened the passenger’s side door wearing his cheap Halloween-store pirate costume, smelling strongly of popcorn shrimp. His job was to stand on the curb and wave to passing motorists, take pictures with children, and occasionally serve food if none of the waitresses showed up (which was often). Personally, she would rather have died, but he thought it was fun and seemed to take great pleasure in “getting into character.” 

“Shiver me timbers,” he said, waving his fake hook hand at her. “Here there be savings, matey.”

“You can walk the goddamn plank right onto the city bus if you don’t get in this car and stop that immediately.” 

He hopped into the car with a laugh. “Yar, do ye not like me accent, Cap’n Mermista?”

“Why are you like this?” She pulled into traffic, cutting off some idiot in a Jeep, who honked at her. She flipped him the bird out the window.

“It’s hard to turn it off! I have to talk like that all day!”

“And I have to blow a little whistle at children who run by the pool, but you don’t catch me out here blowing it on the street at like, pedestrians.”

“Point taken.” He tossed the hook hand on the floor, soon followed by the hat, eye-patch, and bandanna. “Come with me to the track?” 

Mermista didn’t even have to answer. She just got on the highway. Unsurprisingly, being banned from driving had not prevented him from drag racing; it wasn’t like the owners of the track were fond of the police sniffing around. As long as he didn’t drive his rig into the bleachers, nobody really gave a shit. The track was pretty small, right on the edge of the city where urban sprawl gave way to one of the less affluent suburbs. It was nothing much, just a long strip of concrete, some rickety bleachers, and a garage. When she parked in the lot, Seahawk peeled off the pirate costume, under which he was wearing a pair of clearly homemade jorts and a tank top. 

“Ugh, put the costume back on,” she groaned, covering her eyes. “You look like Eminem circa 1999.” 

“I was thinking more…Freddie Mercury at Live Aid, but jorts.” 

“Do _not_ disrespect Freddie Mercury’s memory like that.” Mermista led the way through the unlocked gates and into the garage, where a couple of people kept their cars in exchange for general maintenance around the track. The building was old and dusty and smelled like a decades-long buildup of motor oil, grease, and fumes a human being probably shouldn’t breathe. The walls were lined with tool benches in various states of disrepair and hanging racks laden with rusty tools, only a couple of which she could name. She had expected to see the Chevy Nova he had been racing parked on the end, but in its place was a dusty old Plymouth.

“I thought you were still driving the Nova,” she said, jerking her head at the car. Seahawk just grinned. That was all the answer she needed.

“You set it on fire,” she deadpanned.

“I set it on fire!” he yelled triumphantly at the same time, as if setting a car on fire was an achievement.

“Oh my God.” She couldn’t help it—she cracked a smile.

“Wanna see a video?”

“…Yeah,” she admitted grudgingly. He pulled it up on his phone. The shaky footage showed the poor Nova ricocheting off the concrete barrier on the edge of the track, a section of its crumpled hood immediately bursting into flame. It spun out across the lane, spewing sparks and smoke, before coming to a violent stop against the opposite barrier. People with fire extinguishers began to swarm the wreck, then the video cut out.

“Oh shit!”

“I know! The carnage!” He cackled as Mermista rolled her eyes. He didn’t seem to be able to distinguish fun from mortal danger, something she had a bit of a problem with herself.

“What are you calling this one?” she asked, patting the Plymouth.

“I could name it after you,” he said slyly, clearly convinced that this line was suave.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And then wreck it and set it on fire?”

“In your honor, of course.”

“Hard pass.” She hit the button on the wall that opened the garage door, grabbed the old vinyl lawn chair from where she had stashed it behind a tool bench, and dragged it into a sunny patch of dirt outside. “I’ll be in my office.” 

She spent a good chunk of that summer lying on the chair outside the garage, reading a book in the sun while he worked on his car, occasionally called in to grudgingly hold something in place or hand him tools. As much as Mermista liked to ride in a fast car, she couldn’t have been less interested in whatever dirty, smelly things were going on underneath the hood. Seahawk listened to scratchy classic rock on the radio like it was still the goddamn ‘80s or something. She tore through detective novels the way some people binged TV shows. Her best childhood memories had been made sitting on the front steps of her dad’s place with a stack of Nancy Drew mysteries beside her. Mysteries were comforting, especially when there was certainty that they were going to be solved.

_Fun_ wasn’t the right word to describe it…she felt relaxed there. She was used to keeping her head on a swivel, constantly conscious of her surroundings, but she didn’t have to worry about that when it was just the two of them, the race car, the shitty radio, and her stack of books. Of course, she would have been _more_ relaxed on a private beach, but this would have to do for now.

Besides working, ferrying around a wannabe pirate, and hanging out at a nasty old garage, Mermista spent a lot of time at the roller rink that summer. After the captain of the local derby team had unexpectedly quit, Glimmer had taken over and made it her personal mission to revamp the team. She’d tried to rope everyone she knew into joining with middling success. Adora preferred her workouts solo, Entrapta couldn’t have done a sport if her life depended on it, and Perfuma couldn’t even watch them practice because the mere idea of violence upset her so much, but Mermista and Frosta hadn’t required much convincing. Glimmer had also managed to recruit Netossa, who was, by her own admission, too old and too married to be there. She had been on a team in her twenties, but she’d hung up her skates after blowing out her knee. She had generously come out of retirement to help them out.

Mermista had thought of herself as a generally fit person before she had joined the team, but nothing she had ever done could compare to the soul-crushing workouts Glimmer put them through three nights a week. Her entire body hurt all the time, but she was way too proud and much too competitive to quit. Plus, she really liked being allowed to hit people without getting arrested. Their first bout as a team was coming up soon, and she figured that would make or break her: either she could do it or she couldn’t.

“Hey, cuties!” Glimmer exclaimed with her particular brand of scary-sweetness, hugging first Frosta, then Mermista as they came through the door. Everyone tried to make it into the rink without drawing her attention—if she caught you before practice started, she was known to start giving you unsolicited notes about your performance at the last practice—but of course it was nearly impossible. It was like she had eyes in the back of her head. “We’re just about to start warming up!”

“Yay,” Mermista deadpanned. “Warming up” was a generous way to describe what followed. Five minutes of stretching preceded fifteen nonstop minutes of cardio before the skates even went on, all of this with Glimmer screaming at them like a five-foot-two drill sergeant with pink hair. Once they put on their skates, they had to warm up all over again before Glimmer ran them through a series of increasingly brutal drills. Today’s final drill was an exercise where they paired up and practiced take-downs. Unfortunately for Mermista, she found herself standing across from Netossa, the person with the most experience and therefore the most likely to just straight-up murder her. She must have looked nervous, because Netossa smiled. 

“Should I go easy on you?”

Mermista flared immediately. “Hell no.”

“Alright.” The next thing she knew, she was on the ground. At least she’d remembered to fall the right way, onto her knee and elbow pads instead of directly on her ass. She popped back up, trying to appear unfazed. It was easy enough the first time, but the second, third, fourth, and fifth times were each a little more difficult. She didn’t even manage to take the older woman down once. On her way to the locker room, Netossa slapped her on the back.

“Keep practicing,” she said, her tone an obnoxious combination of arrogance and encouragement. If she hadn’t been half-dead, Mermista might have told her to take her skates off and fight her no-holds-barred right then and there, but all her muscles felt like jelly and she was more bruise than skin. She skated out of the rink and laid down on a bench, letting her arms and legs dangle dramatically from either side. Glimmer was sitting on the ground nearby, taking her skates off. The look on her face was a mixture of intense focus, worry, and a strange sadness.

“Jeez, are we really that bad?”

Glimmer shook her head with a wry smile. “No. You guys are doing pretty good, actually.”

“Well, I’m gonna be lying here, like, dying for the next ten minutes or so if you wanna talk.” There was a long moment of silence while Mermista waited for her breathing to return to normal and Glimmer stared off into space, one skate off and one still on.

“Everything has been weird lately,” she said finally. “I feel like…I have to make a big decision soon and I don’t know how to make it.”

“Are you preggo?” 

“No!” She shot her a look. “It’s hard to explain. Not to get too deep on you, but I’m starting to realize that I have nothing going for me and it’s my own goddamn fault. I’ve pushed away every opportunity that ever came my way because…either because I was afraid to fuck it up or because I thought I was too good. I don’t have a degree, I don’t have a job, I can’t hold down a relationship…in the grand scheme of things, I’m basically nothing.”

“Hey, you’re not _nothing_ …you’re the captain of a solidly mediocre roller derby team.” Glimmer laughed. “Chill out, girl. Literally everyone we know is a hot mess. We still have plenty of time to grow up or stop being losers or whatever.”

“Yeah, I know…” She smiled. “You need a hand?”

Once Glimmer helped her peel herself off the bench, Mermista divested herself of her gear and drove Frosta home. The two of them shared an apartment despite the fact that Frosta’s parents were well-off enough to have gotten her a single in a way nicer part of town. Mermista got the distinct impression that Frosta didn’t want to live alone. She was younger than the rest of them, just a kid, really. The company was kind of nice, not that she ever would have admitted that. The only time they fought was over the bathroom, especially after practice. This time, Frosta won and got to take her shower first. Mermista took her revenge by deciding to take a bath instead, which meant the bathroom would be hers for an hour or more.

The small room filled with steam quickly, tropical like the summers she remembered from her childhood. Whenever she thought about that, about the humidity in Central Florida and how everything had felt slow and soft during the most intense heat of the day, she always saw the same image in her mind. It was a flashbulb memory, how her father had looked from the door way of the trailer, sitting in his armchair with one pitiful fan trained on him, squinting against the light she had let in with her. Bottle of liquor in one hand, cigarette in the other. _Close the door, Misty._

Despite her nonchalance, Mermista worried about the same things that Glimmer worried about. The difference was that Glimmer had opportunities to turn down. She didn’t know what the fuck she was going to do when she was done messing around. She had no plans and no support. Her friends would do what they could for her, but how could anyone help her if she didn’t even know what to ask for? She knew that people talked to her about their problems because she always acted like she didn’t have any of her own, but it wasn’t true. She was just a really good liar, able to bury herself under so many layers of irony and sarcasm and insincerity that nobody would ever be able to dig deep enough to find the truth.

The next day was Saturday. Mermista spent all day at the pool, wearing the unfortunate red and white one piece bathing suit that was her uniform, blowing her whistle at kids trying to crack their heads open on the slippery tile around the pool. She would puff on the whistle until the cows came home, but it wasn’t like she was going to go down there and actually _do_ anything unless someone was actively drowning, something which nobody had ever been dumb enough to try on her watch. The worst thing that had ever happened had been the day some brat had barfed in the shallow end and she’d had to clear out the pool so somebody else could come and clean it up.

Luckily, nobody barfed or drowned or cracked their stupid skull open that day. When she got home, she showered off the sunscreen and the insidious smell of chlorine and flopped face-down on the couch. Her phone rang almost immediately. She put it on speaker, positioned it next to her face, and answered with a nonverbal groan. Seahawk’s annoyingly cheerful voice blared out of the speakers.

“Hello, beautiful.” 

“Barf.”

“Do you have plans?”

“No.” 

“Wanna go someplace fun?” 

“Obviously. I’m a fun girl. Come over.” She hung up.

Going out was a full theatrical production complete with costumes and aliases. It had started off as a joke and evolved into an elaborate, drunken game of dress-up that they were both earnestly invested in. Mermista would have felt beyond dumb performing this little routine with anyone else, but it was impossible to feel dumb around Seahawk.

He showed up half an hour later with a frankly alarming number of bags and immediately set to work making drinks. She idly perused her closet while she waited. When he joined her in her room, he handed her a plastic cup with a suspiciously green, fizzy liquid in it.

“See if you can find the subtle notes in this complex flavor profile.” 

Mermista took a cautious sip, then made a face. “Okay, this is tequila in Mountain Dew.”

“Where I come from, we call it a Mountain Dew-garita, and it is a delicacy.” 

She snorted a laugh. “Your culture is so rich and beautiful.”

Once they both had a good buzz going, it was time for a fashion show. She revealed each outfit by turning around dramatically and striking a pose. He would tell her she was stunning, of course, and then offer his insights. Some women swore that they would never date a bisexual guy because they hated the idea of some dude moving in on their man; as far as Mermista was concerned, it just meant that he both knew the difference between an empire waist and a drop waist _and_ which one she looked hottest in. After some spirited debate about the mood of the night and the color scheme they were going for, they came to an agreement on a chic silvery romper with a pair of gold pumps. 

She did her hair and makeup in the bathroom while he put on whatever (no-doubt bombastic) outfit he had brought with him. She kept things relatively simple; she knew she was going to sweat off whatever effort she put in as soon as they started dancing. When she opened the door to her room again, Seahawk was wearing what could only be described as John Travolta’s outfit from _Saturday Night Fever,_ only a particularly bright shade of lavender.

“Well?” he said, spreading his arms for her inspection. 

She smoothed his lapels with a smile. “Love it.”

“Who do I have the pleasure of accompanying tonight?” Mermista was prepared for this question; she adopted a regal posture and extended her hand daintily.

“Isla Southern. I’m from an island. My dad owns the island. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

He kissed the back of her hand. “But you _are_ a big deal.” She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t falter. “You can call me Lucky Afortunado. I’ve cheated death so many times, they had to name me twice.”

“Oooh, how mysterious.” She wiggled her eyebrows and held up her phone. “Shall we split the fare on our chariot?”

They were always the best-looking couple in any bar they walked into. Mermista was pulling most of the weight, of course, but Seahawk did his part. The places they went were equal parts flash and trash. There was glitter on every available surface, sparkling in the rainbow neon light, but everything was just a little broken down, a little grungy, and if you wanted to get in a fight, then you didn’t have to try very hard.

Not only were they very hot, they were also good dancers. Each of them had a little natural rhythm and a lot to drink; they managed to make up some fairly elaborate dance routines. Every time they went out, he told her he had been tutored in the fine art of one dance style or another by the masters, but this was just part of the fiction. In reality, he knew a few very vague and ostentatious Latin dance moves, probably learned from his grandmother. It was enough to build on. They had fun, taking over the dance floor with salsa spins and some dangerously uncoordinated footwork. Sometimes she caught him watching her with a weird look on his face. It had taken her a while to figure that look out. It wasn’t creepy or overtly sexual; that was something she was used to seeing, that she could have recognized immediately. It wasn’t jealous or possessive. Eventually, she’d come to the conclusion that it just made him happy to see her having fun. _Weirdo._

The night was going almost suspiciously well until the staff started dragging out karaoke equipment onto the stage. She scowled and whirled around to confront her dance partner. The bastard had tricked her. He knew she would never have agreed to come if she had known there was going to be karaoke.

“It’s a coincidence, I swear!” Seahawk yelled over the music, holding up his hands in surrender.

“Bullshit. We’re leaving.” They went back and forth for a few minutes, but in the the end, there was nothing she could do or say to stop him from doing karaoke. Trying to do so was a fool’s errand. Much as she had objected, it was fun to watch in the same way it was fun to watch a car crash. He was an okay singer, but it was the bizarre hip shimmy he was doing while belting some awful ABBA song that really made her question her attraction to this man. A couple of times, she found herself smiling and had to quickly wipe the look off her face before he looked her way. She would never live it down.

Mermista was edging her way to the bar to get another drink when she happened to squeeze past a dude wearing a tragic pair of khakis who was right in the middle of a homophobic tirade. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who was the butt of this joke: her date was on stage in a purple suit shaking it to ABBA. Luckily, the music was much too loud for Seahawk to have heard, but there was no way Mermista was letting anyone get away with that shit. She marched up to the khakis guy and knocked the drink out of his hand, splashing cheap beer all over him, herself, and a handful of unfortunate bystanders. He looked stunned.

“What the fuck?”

“Say it again, motherfucker!” she yelled. Everyone who had been idly watching the stage turned to look at the disturbance

“Crazy bitch,” the guy sputtered, wiping the beer off his face with his shirt. He clearly didn’t want to hit her because she was a woman, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hit _him._

“You’re gonna be _my_ bitch after I slap that ugly soul patch straight off your chin.” She was just about to start throwing hands when Seahawk dropped the microphone, hopped off the stage, and grabbed her arm. He hustled her out of the bar quickly. Once they were on the sidewalk, they both started running. There was probably no need—it wasn’t like the guy was going to come after them to avenge his two-dollar beer—but it was more exciting that way. They cut across the main drag and onto a side street, shaded by a row of uniform trees and lined with cars. Seahawk pulled her into the passenger’s seat of one of the vehicles. She lost both heels in the scramble.

“Whose car is this?” Mermista asked breathlessly. 

“I don’t know, but it was unlocked.” 

She laughed and reached down to pull the lever that reclined the seat. He yelped in surprise as they both fell all the way back, coming to a jerky halt when the seat hit its limit. She shook her sweaty hair out of her eyes, planting one knee on either side of his hips.

“What was that all about?” he asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. His eyebrows were furrowed, concerned. There was a little smudge of glitter under his eye. “That guy didn’t grab you or anything, did he?”

“Nah. He was just talking shit.” No need to tell him that she’d been defending his honor. He was so… _himself_ all the time, so vulnerable and open-hearted that it scared her. In the past, she might have just told him to toughen up before he got hurt, but she realized that she didn’t want him to change. She liked him the way he was. If she had to protect both of them, then she would. She knew that she was strong enough. 

“Are you gonna fuck me in this Toyota Corolla?” she asked coyly. Seahawk slapped his hand to his chest, feigning offense.

“I would never make love to a woman like you in such a deeply shitty car. But we can make out a little if you want.”

“Dork.” She took hold of his face with both hands and leaned in to kiss him. There was no need to start slow; Mermista let herself be a little hungry, a little needier than she would normally allow. The adrenaline rush of running away was tapering off into another, more nebulous stream of chemicals in her hazy brain, some dangerous cocktail of sentimentality and arousal that she was too drunk to shut off. She could feel his calluses catching on the shimmery fabric of the romper where his palms met her lower back, and she found herself wishing she could feel that texture against her skin instead. Maybe she could get him to rethink his stance on fucking in subpar vehicles.

Suddenly, the lights of the car flashed, accompanied by a cheerful little beep as someone unlocked it remotely, unaware that they had forgotten to lock it in the first place. They both froze, staring wide-eyed at one another. Mermista scrambled backwards, fumbling for the door handle. She tumbled out of the car, leaving her shoes behind in her haste. Seahawk audibly banged his head on the door frame on the way out. The owner of the car yelled something at them as they sprinted away, but they were laughing too hard to hear. She didn’t feel bad for them—they’d gotten a really nice pair of shoes for free.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of an unfinished Glimmer arc in this one that I'll pick back up in the next installment. I could never get together quite enough material to give her a full fic, so she's doomed to exist as everyone else's B-plot for now. 
> 
> Jam #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60PwTgPY9vg  
> Jam #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOsx_JXaOYM

Mermista had once scoffed at the notion that women are somehow instinctively drawn to men who remind them of their fathers, but that was before she had grown up, left home, and immediately fallen headfirst into a psychological holding pattern featuring another impulsive, irresponsible man with a drinking problem. Even though she could see history repeating itself right in front of her, she was still dumb, naive, or hopeless enough to keep playing her part in the pageant over and over and over again.

It went like this: she and Seahawk would have one or two really good weekends. She would allow herself to invest in the relationship a little, start letting him get away with some of the syrupy romantic stuff she usually put a stop to, let him stay over more than one consecutive night. Her brain got all addled with oxytocin and dopamine and whatever other brain chemicals came together to cripple the common sense of people in relationships; she would convince herself that things could stay that way forever despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. It was never more than a couple of weeks before he found a new and creative way to remind her exactly why she had been so cautious in the first place. Then she would push him as far back as she could without cutting ties completely, he would work his way back into her good graces, and they would start the whole thing all over again.

Her phone rang while she was at work. One of the poolside MILFs glared at her when she picked it up, but Mermista just slid her sunglasses down her nose and glared right back. She could make sure the lady’s stupid kid didn’t strangle himself with his own goggles and talk on the phone at the same time.

“Hello?”

“Hey, _mami.”_ She would have known that too-cheerful tone anywhere: Seahawk wanted something. She barely resisted the urge to throw her phone into the pool.

“What?” she asked flatly.

“Would you by any chance be able to bail me out sometime today?”

The familiar weight of disappointment settled onto her shoulders, but she kept all emotion out of her voice when she answered. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She debated making him wait until her shift was over, but she was too agitated to sit still. The kid who cleaned the pool would do whatever she wanted—she made sure her coworkers had a healthy fear of her wrath—so she told him to cover her ass and dipped a couple of hours early. She drove to Seahawk’s building and casually broke into his apartment. The door was so old and poorly reinforced that all she had to do to shatter the jamb was give it a good ram with her shoulder. Mermista picked through the clutter, trying not to examine any of it too closely, until she found the title for his car (which was still sitting, stranded without keys, in the parking lot). She made only a cursory effort to put the door back in its proper place before she left to pay a visit to the friendly neighborhood bail bondsman.

When you moved to a new city, it was in your best interests to get on the good side of a bail bondsman or two; unfortunately, Mermista was not adept at making pleasant first impressions. The man behind the counter knew her face, but he did not look happy to see her. As such, things took a little longer than they might have otherwise, but it was still only a couple of hours later that she pulled up to the side entrance of the county jail.

She felt a brief stab of sympathy when she saw Seahawk coming down the steps, taking them two at a time. He looked rough, and the reddish remnants of a bruise ringed one of his eyes. Nevertheless, he flashed a debonair grin as he got into the car.

“Beautiful, intelligent, and resourceful. You really are the total package.” 

Mermista kept her mouth clamped shut tight. She glowered at the road in front of her while he cheerfully related the (no doubt heavily embellished) tale of his arrest for fencing stolen car parts out of the back of the garage. As he rambled, he absently reached over to rest his hand on her thigh like he always did while she was driving. She swatted it away immediately. He trailed off in the middle of his sentence, studying her face in profile.

“Are you mad?” The look she gave him would have killed a more self-aware man on the spot, but Seahawk just kept talking. “I’ll pay you back for the bond fee, of course.”

She white-knuckled the steering wheel, restraining the urge to slap the expression of hurt and confusion off his face. “You know what your problem is, Seahawk? You don’t think about anybody but yourself. You don’t give a fuck about how the stupid shit you do affects other people. Grow up!”

“Mermista—” She slammed on the brakes and jerked the car to the side of the road, so angry and afraid that she felt cold inside.

“Get out of my car. And don’t fucking call me.”

Mermista cried all the way home, the way she cried every time the merry-go-round reached this inevitable point on its rotation. She had been helpless for a long time, a whole childhood spent learning how to defend herself in every sense of the word; she hated any echo of that feeling. Seahawk was going to do whatever he wanted no matter what she said. She could protect him from a lot of things, but not from himself. He was just going to keep racking up DUIs and getting picked up for petty charges until he either drove into a tree or got himself murdered. Did she really want to attach herself to that? Did she really want to set herself up for more grief?

The day she’d taken the Greyhound out of Florida, Mermista had promised herself that she wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her or take advantage of her ever again. She had promised to do everything she could to give herself a good life, because nobody else was going to do it for her. She just hadn’t expected to be so conflicted about what that would mean.

She didn’t have much time to sulk on her couch, eating ice cream and watching reruns of _America’s Next Top Model._ She and Glimmer had plans to give one another a couple of doomed manicures to celebrate the eve of their first bout. She put on the grossest sweatpants she could find and dragged herself over to the apartment that Glimmer, Bow, and Adora shared. When she got there, the living room floor was already strewn with all the makings of a manicure. Glimmer was sitting in the middle of the mess. 

“You look like shit,” she said brightly, gesturing to the space across from her on the floor. “And you’re wearing your sad girl sweats. Either you’re PMSing or you’re fighting with Seahawk, and I’m going to need you to not get your period the day before we have to do sports.”

“Wow, I am _basking_ in your love and sympathy right now.” Mermista sat down on the floor and presented one hand to Glimmer, splaying her fingers on the coffee table to give her a surface to work on. Her nails, once a source of beauty and pride, had been destroyed by a tragic combination of chlorine exposure and derby practice. “Lucky for you, it’s the second thing.”

“What did he do now?” Glimmer held up an emery board, made a face at Mermista’s peeling nails, then reached for a set of clippers instead.

“I don’t even want to talk about it.” She glanced down at her lap, where her phone had begun to buzz. “Ugh. Speak of the devil.” She sent the call to voicemail with her free hand. “Am I really one of those dumbass women who thinks she can _fix_ guys? Like, what a cliché.”

“You’re not dumb. I don’t really think you want to fix him, either. I think you like ‘em a little chaotic.” Mermista snorted. Glimmer pointed the nail clippers at her accusingly. “He’s never going to figure out what you want from him until you tell him, y’know. Men are oblivious.”

“ _Puh-_ lease, girl. You haven’t dated a guy since, like, some kid with the Bieb wrote the number for his Motorola Razr on your trapper-keeper in 2008 or something. Spoiler alert: they’ve gotten worse since then.”

Glimmer didn’t laugh at her very on-point and hilarious 2008 jokes; instead, she kept her eyes on her work, chewing on her lip. “Can I tell you something kinda fucked up?”

“Duh. Love to hear some fucked up shit.”

Glimmer took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, as if she couldn’t bear to see her reaction. “Me and Bow had sex.”

For a moment, Mermista was actually surprised into silence. “Okay, bombshell. I thought you two were like…brother and sister.”

“We _were._ For a long time. I told you everything has been weird!”

“I thought you meant ‘everything has been weird,’ like, you were thinking about changing your major, not ‘everything has been weird’ like you were gonna start boning your friends. I would have staged an intervention or something.” 

“It gets worse.” She went back to filing and buffing Mermista’s nails with a renewed, somewhat manic vigor.

“Who else did you seduce, you sicko?”

Glimmer made a face at her. “Nobody. Me and Bow haven’t talked about it since it happened. We talk about _everything._ I feel like I just chucked a lifelong friendship into the garbage because I can’t figure myself out.” Glimmer was clearly spiraling; Mermista needed to wrangle this conversation back under control before they had a full-scale meltdown on their hands.

“Listen, I’m sure he’s having this exact conversation with Perfuma like, right now, and let’s be real: she’s way more qualified to handle this shit. You know how he psychs himself out about everything. Remember that one time we all got too high and watched _Criminal Minds_ and he thought he was a secret murderer with multiple personalities?” Glimmer laughed, and Mermista saw her relax a little. “I mean, what did you _just_ say to me about men? They’re oblivious, right?”

“I know, I know, but…what if I don’t even know what I want?”

“I guess tell him that, then. Better than nothing.” When Glimmer looked away to grab a bottle of polish, she surreptitiously sent another call to voicemail.

Mermista’s nails were a gentle, relaxing shade of coral for a total of one night. By the time she warmed up and got all her gear on the next day, they were chipped, scuffed, and broken in at least one place. That was what she got for thinking she could have nice things.

Everyone they knew had come to watch the bout. Why Glimmer had allowed Adora and Bow to bring airhorns was anyone’s guess. They were already testing them out, much to every single person in the room’s chagrin. Catra was sitting beside Adora with her fingers in her ears, glowering. Everybody had assured Perfuma that she didn’t have to come if it made her uncomfortable, but she was there anyway, half-hiding behind Bow. Even Entrapta had shown up despite her seeming inability to be on time for anything. The _Nutty Professor_ didn’t stay to watch, but Mermista saw him drop her at the door. She still didn’t trust the guy as far as she could throw him, but it was hard to dislike him with too much ferocity after she’d witnessed him walk in wearing a crisp shirt, pressed slacks, and a garish pink bag on his arm, which he’d handed to Entrapta without an iota of embarrassment.

Netossa’s wife, Spinnerella, was standing at the edge of the rink, looking anxious; when she caught Mermista’s eye, she beckoned her over.

“Hey. Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“I’ve watched you guys practice a few times, and you’re one of the best on the team. Can you just…watch Netossa’s back for me? I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself again. I tried to tell her to go easy, but she’s _so_ stubborn…”

There was something about the request that caught her off guard, made her chest pulse with emotions that she did _not_ have time for right now. Something about Netossa being such a hardass, something about Spinnerella, objectively one of the nicest people alive, asking her secretly to keep her safe…

“Okay. Sure. Yeah,” she replied brusquely. Spinnerella smiled, clearly relieved.

“Thanks, Mermista. Good luck out there.”

Soon after, Glimmer called the team into a pre-game huddle. “Alright, Power Princesses. I’m not going to pretend that the pressure isn’t on, because it is. Literally everyone in this building expects us to embarrass ourselves, even our friends and loved ones. _Especially_ our friends and loved ones. Let’s show them that we know what we’re doing. Let’s show them we can back up all our talk. More importantly, let’s play with some fucking heart. The other team has a lot of wins under their belt; they’re expecting us to just lay down and take it, but if there’s one thing I know we are, it’s a scrappy bunch of bitches. Princesses on three!”

The five members of their team who would be in play lined up alongside the members of the opposing team. Their captain was a sleek, smug individual whose derby name was Double Trouble. They were known to prioritize strategy over brute force. That may have worked with other teams, Mermista reckoned, but her team had so much brute force that it was going to be hard to answer that with smoke and mirrors. Then again…maybe _all_ they had was brute force. That, and some really clever derby names.

Double Trouble and Glimmer— a.k.a. Lisa Spank—shook hands before the bout began. Then the whistle blew, and the game began. At first, Mermista was mainly focused on the two most important tenets of roller derby: staying upright and moving forward. During the jams when she was in play, she managed to follow the lead of the more experienced players and not fuck anything up. She only ended up in the penalty box _twice,_ a record low if you took all their scrimmages into consideration. She was content with taking a backseat until one play about halfway through the bout.

Frosta (Ice-QT) was their jammer and Netossa (Serena Killiams) was their pivot. Mermista saw a change in their gameplay immediately; Frosta was going to try to pass the helmet cover off to Netossa to designate her as the scoring player. She saw someone lining up disrupt the pass; not only were they going to ruin the play, but they also were going to totally destroy Netossa in the process. Nobody else seemed to be looking that direction. Almost reflexively, Mermista (Agatha Gristly) poured on a burst of speed to get ahead and threw a hard shoulder into the person’s sternum, staggering them back. She held them at bay with her body until she saw the cover change hands up ahead. Netossa pulled it over her helmet and shot forward, grinning.

She could hear people cheering, along with a couple of celebratory airhorn blasts from Bow and Adora. Through the cacophony of voices and the constant clatter of skates on wood, Mermista still somehow managed to pick out one voice in particular, hollering at at obnoxious frequency she had become very, very familiar with. She glanced over at the place where her friends were sitting, and sure enough, there was Seahawk, holding a novelty plastic megaphone that he did _not_ need. She didn’t have time to think about it too much, as at the moment, someone was trying their best to hip-check her straight to hell, but she felt…good. She liked the idea that someone was there just for her, not cheering for the points or the team, but for her.

When Glimmer put them through their workouts during practice, Mermista felt every twinge, every strain, every protest that her muscles made, but while she was playing, all she felt was the nimble strength of her body, how capable it was of doing what it needed to do. It was an energizing feeling instead of one that drained her. Even so, when the buzzer sounded to end the game, her limbs immediately felt ten times heavier as all that exertion caught up with her all at once. Everyone on the team looked at the scoreboard at the same time.

They had only lost by ten points.

“We didn’t totally get our asses handed to us!” Glimmer exclaimed, seemingly in disbelief. She grabbed Mermista’s arm and shook her. “We scored a normal amount of points!”

As the spectators and the winning team looked on in confusion, the Power Princesses skated into a chaotic, sweaty group hug, laughing and slapping one another on the back, celebrating their very respectable loss.

“I’m so proud of you guys,” Glimmer said tearfully, squeezing Frosta so hard that Mermista heard something crack. “We’re a real team!”

“We were always a real team,” Netossa scoffed. “Next time, maybe we can even win.” 

“Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mermista replied, elbowing her in the ribs. 

They made their way to the locker room to get changed and count their bruises. Mermista stayed there even after everyone else had already left, icing her ankle. It didn’t really hurt that much, but she wanted an excuse to be alone, to think about things before she rejoined her friends. It was only a couple minutes later, however, that she heard footsteps approaching the door. Someone knocked.

“Come in,” she called, then wished she hadn’t when Seahawk came in.

“Frosta said you would be back here,” he said. “Those were some sick moves. You were like—” He pulled a crude approximation of her block. “And we were like—” He made the noise of a crowd cheering.

Mermista didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I _am_ pretty hardcore.”

“You’re amazing.” The sincerity with which he said it knocked her off balance a little. She went back to icing her ankle. He sat down on the bench beside her. There was a silence for a long moment, longer than she’d ever known him to be able to keep his mouth shut.

“You were right,” he said finally. That was not what Mermista had been expecting to hear, but she liked the sound of it. “To be honest, I’m not used to anyone giving a shit about what I do or what happens to me, good or bad. I guess I didn’t really think you cared as much as you do, even though in hindsight, it seems like should have been obvious, even to me. I know that’s a bullshit excuse for acting like I do, but for whatever it’s worth to you, I’m sorry.”

He tried to catch her eye, but she was looking down. Seahawk reached out tentatively and took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers when he didn’t encounter resistance.

“I love you,” he said softly, lifting their joined hands and pressing a kiss to her scuffed knuckles. He had said it before, mostly when he was drunk, but never with the weight it carried now.

Mermista swallowed. _Fuck it._ “I love you too. And it’s fucking terrifying, you asshole. You almost die, like, twice a week.”

He ducked his head. “I’m—”

“Shut up.” She didn’t want to hear him apologize again; once was enough. “We are both literal dumpster fires and it is _not_ a cute look. We _have_ to get our shit together, alright? Promise me?”

“I promise.” He crossed his heart with his free hand. “I don’t know if the world is ready to handle the two of us with our shit together. We’ll be unstoppable.”

Uncertainty and a learned reluctance to count on anything as permanent had scrambled her vision of the future for a long time, but right then, an image of what it might be like began to solidify in her mind. It was an image she liked a lot, one she was willing to fight for, even if most of the fight was with herself. Mermista felt a slow grin come over her face, equal parts affection and mischief; she leaned forward and bumped her forehead against his.

“Damn right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter @prettyalouettey and tell me what your roller derby name would be.


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